


A Day at a Time

by Nonplayer_Character



Category: RWBY
Genre: F/F, Yangst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-14
Updated: 2017-03-14
Packaged: 2018-10-05 03:16:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10296260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nonplayer_Character/pseuds/Nonplayer_Character
Summary: It's an accidental renuion, and there are so many things that should be said which aren't.





	

Yang isn’t really looking for acceptance, and Blake isn’t looking for forgiveness - which is perhaps why, when they find one another again, the meeting isn’t tampered by guilt or rage or worse: indignation.

It is a quiet affair, relatively, between two tampered parties, looking for nothing in particular from one another anymore.

Yang has learned to let go of the pain she feels. The constant nagging feeling in her chest that tells her she is undesirable. The part of her, persistent as it is, which taunts her: they’ve all left you. She has stopped asking why no one will stay. She has told herself that she is enough for herself. If her mom leaves, if her partner leaves, if her team leaves, and her sister must, too, Yang remains. If no one else is there for her, she will be there for herself because that is what life is. Forming connections and giving love freely, always remembering that to do so is an act of trust - but true love is of the self and sustainability there, with the invitation to others and the understanding that even without them, Yang will survive. Better even, because she always moves forward.

Yang is only ever looking to make it to tomorrow.

Blake, an avid runner, hangs in the shadows and knows she has done the right thing, even when the world sneers at her; even when her conscious hits her in the evening and demands she feel regret. Blake knows the price of this life, that it will take anything it can wrap its greedy tendrils around; if Blake must distance herself to protect her friends and family, the people she loves, it is a small price. A self-imposed punishment for daring to dream that she could outrun her demons. Blake is sharp, cunning and quick, and she is not stupid enough to believe that the past is just the past.

Blake has only ever wanted to escape yesterday.

Thunder cracks across the sky and Blake flinches, barely - she hates the rain, the possibility of it - Yang watches her and the seething pulsing disdain through her veins is not anger at anyone in particular, it’s just the affect of life. Of living this messed up reality.

In truth, Yang half expected never to say Blake again. That’s how it goes, isn’t it?

“I’m not sorry,” Blake tells her, and the thunder cracks overhead, followed by lighting, the deep shadows under her eyes are evident to Yang in the brief light. Yang wonders, idly, how long it has been since Blake has had a decent night’s sleep. She imagines a month, or maybe longer. Sun had said she’d left Menagerie about three months ago.

“No,” Yang says. She chuckles but it is hollow, “what could you possibly have to be sorry about? Leaving a school-assigned team? A school-assigned partner? A school-assigned life. I’m not looking for an apology.”

Blake falters, looks like she wants to say something else, but says instead:

“What … are you looking for, Yang?”

Yang shrugs, rolls out her shoulder, looks briefly to the side.

“Nothing from you,” she tells Blake, glancing at her from her peripheral. And it’s true. Does it hurt? Sure it hurts. It will always hurt to be left behind. “I’m looking for my sister.” Yang tells her, honestly. Something seems to dawn on Blake here, because she steps closer, reaches out to Yang and then lets her hand fall between them.

“I left you to protect you,” Blake says, after a time. The surprise is there in the way Yang turns on her suddenly - but it’s a half moment and then gone altogether.

“I’m not mad.” Yang tells her, the bravado in her voice all but gone. There’s something like resignation in the set of her shoulders.

“Could have fooled me,” Blake replies. Yang rolls her eyes.

“I’m not mad,” she repeats, “you’re a big girl. If you want to run away - who am I to stop you-”

“I ran away to spar you another missing limb,” Blake defends, her voice rises, she looks genuinely exasperated and Yang finds that unfair. If anyone should have the right to be annoyed, it ought to be her.

“And that’s fine, Blake,” Yang tells her, dryly.

“It doesn’t sound fine!” Blake accuses. It starts to rain. Blake hates the fucking rain. Yang looks at her and her eyes flash red for just a moment. When she opens her mouth, it’s not in anger, it’s in something like sadness. Sadness that cuts Blake right down to the bone of her being.

“You know - maybe what I would have appreciated more was waking up to my friends. Maybe I would have liked to have only been missing my arm and not everyone I care about,” Yang tells her, “but I don’t get to decide these things - it’s your life.” Yang says, wraps her arms around her middle and holds herself. She’s looking far off into the treeline, studiously avoiding everything. It takes Blake a second to realizes she’s shaking with some contained emotion. “If you want to leave to fulfil some sense of martyrdom you do it, Blake. Do whatever you want. I’m done chasing after people who don’t care about me.”

There’s a moment, an agonizing, painful moment where the ramifications of Blake’s actions fall on her shoulders like wet wool in the rain and the thunder and the lighting.

“I’m tired,” Yang tells her, “I’m tired of being unwanted.”

“...You’re not unwanted,” Blake tells her quietly. The fact that her clothes are soaked through and the thunder is crashing above them seems insignificant now. “I only wanted you to be safe.”

“Safe, sure,” Yang says, “but at what cost?”

For a very long time the two stand there in that uncomfortable silence between staying and going. This meeting of fate is unplanned and the particulars of it are shoddy at best. Blake doesn't make to leave because of something selfish in her that missed Yang, missed her to the core of her being - and perhaps that is echoed in Yang, that she seems rooted, too.

“I’m not sorry,” Blake says, again, after a time. They watch one another and Blake mumbles it even as she moves closer, even as she wraps her arms around Yang and buries her head in Yang’s shoulder. “I’m not sorry,” she chokes out. Yang’s arm, flesh and bone, stays at her side, but the prosthetic rests heavy on her hip. Blake hears Yang sigh heavily, in something like defeat.

“I am,” says Yang, but even as she says it, she doesn’t let go. Blake figures it’s a start. 

**Author's Note:**

> I like that in Italian, Blake's surname literally just means beautiful woman.


End file.
